On Fri, 2013-04-05 at 20:27 +0100, James Stone wrote: > Thanks for posting this. I cannot tell the difference with ABX - even > for the 108 version - so I guess either my ears are shot (quite > likely) or my ears are not able to hear such subtleties (also quire > likely).. The weakest link in the sound chain is important, this might be you, but it also could be your equipment or even the room, standing waves etc.. It could be that something that would cause a loss in sound quality, will improve the sound for your sound chain. This isn't very likely, but possible. The phones outputs of my sound card, my hifi amp and my mixing console do all sound different and in addition the difference differs regarding to the used phones. The idea to find out, what we are able to hear and what not, to get more knowledge about our individual abilities, easily could lead to miscalculations, when we try to get information about this by double blind tests. Do you also change the sound chain double blind or at least blind? A long time ago I mentioned that I never made a real blind/double blind test, well, what you call a real test, I don't call a valid test. I made many tests not to get knowledge about my abilities, but when we developed microphones, or even when we sold stereo pairs, several employees listened. Btw. to find a stereo pair it's better to listen, than to do measurements! Try to find a stereo pair of microphones that fit together, by objective scientific measurements and ask people to listen to microphones to find stereo pairs. I'll use the stereo pairs from people who listened to the mics, not the pairs that were found by objective measurements. The idea that there is something most near to perfect objectivity is a fallacy. To find out what abilities we have, we need to make many audio productions. If people are impressed of our audio productions, perhaps not mum, maybe people from engineering societies, than we know that we've got "good ears". Passing a test only will tell us, how good or worse we are in passing a test. Meaningful is the quality of our work and the quality depends to the fact on how many different gear in how many different situations the sound is good. Is the sound ok in a professional studio and on an elCheapo car hifi etc.? _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-user mailing list Linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user
